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Johnson's Spending Draws Audit

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By JOHN W. ALLMAN and ADAM EMERSON

jallman@tampatrib.com aemerson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 13, 2009

Updated: 03/13/2009 12:24 am

TAMPA - A state agency will hire an independent auditor to determine how former Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson spent federal money meant for voter education and equipment.

The audit, being paid for by the Florida Department of State, will look specifically at about $3.2 million in federal Help America Vote Act dollars that Johnson's office had received since 2006.

The bulk of the money was supposed to be spent on voting machines, with the remaining portion going to voter education and poll worker training. Federal money cannot be used to campaign for office.

Johnson spent about $944,000 in federal money, plus $1 million in county cash, on an expansive voter education campaign, according to county records. The money paid for everything from radio and TV advertisements to hiring consultants to reaching out to specific groups such as black voters.

One of the consultants was Michelle B. Patty, who received $16,204 in October for "African American community outreach."

Patty, who runs a medical and legal referral service, was responsible for using the money to educate voters. On Election Day, Patty reportedly paid at least one low-income resident $100 to stand outside a voting precinct and hand out literature supporting Johnson's re-election campaign against Phyllis Busansky.

Towanda Speights, a single of mother of four, said she got a call from a friend about getting paid to work for Patty.

Speights lives at Robles Park Village, a Tampa Housing Authority property.

Speights said she had never met Patty before agreeing to work on Election Day.

Speights was paid to stand outside Fair Oaks Recreation Center on North 34th Street, handing out literature. She said she knew of about five other people from Robles Park recruited to work for Patty.

Jerome Ryans, housing authority president, said he saw Laura Harris, the Bethune Highrise resident council president, and another public housing resident handing out campaign literature for Johnson on Election Day. One of the women, Ryans could not remember which, was wearing a Buddy Johnson T-shirt.

Bethune is a senior housing facility on West Union Street.

Harris refused on Thursday to say whether Patty paid her to work in support of Johnson.

"Michelle and I have a friendship," she said. "We don't have an employee-employer relationship."

Patty did not return repeated calls for comment.

Money Trail Muddy

It's not clear what money - county or federal - was used to pay consultants such as Patty. She was not paid out of Johnson's campaign fund, according to records.

Johnson did not return calls for comment.

Jennifer Krell Davis, a Florida Department of State spokeswoman, said that because federal voting money was mingled with county funding, any determination of how it was spent would be difficult without a thorough review.

"That's what we have to get down there and figure out," Davis said. "It's just trying to figure out what was paid out of what pot of money."

Johnson's office spent thousands in voter education money on other consultants in the months before the election.

And - through his re-election campaign - he paid $2,500 to Enhancement Enterprises, a consulting firm managed by Jarvis El-Amin.

El-Amin and Patty both are well-known in the black community. They previously served together as managers of a defunct company called Help, which dissolved in 2006.

Residents across Tampa recalled talking to one or both of them at different events before the election. Dwight Bolden, a West Tampa activist and longtime friend of Patty, said they spoke at length on several occasions about diversity and the difference between Johnson and Busansky. "One of the things that she opened up my eyes to that I didn't realize at the time was that Buddy Johnson's office was 100 percent diverse."

Patty never encouraged him to vote for Johnson or even asked whom he planned to support, Bolden said.

Frank Reddick, a former interim member of the Tampa City Council who was a registered agent for Patty and El-Amin's company, said he watched the pair encourage many residents to vote. He did not hear either of them endorse Johnson, he said.

Reddick said the buzz in the black community was that Johnson was the more diverse candidate. He said the source of that information never was clear.

"I know there was some sentiment in the black community that Buddy had a significant amount of African-Americans working on his staff, and blacks should be sensitive to that," he said.

Joe Robinson, who lost the 2000 campaign for elections supervisor to Pam Iorio, spoke to Patty at a candidate forum in East Tampa. She told him she was involved in voter education.

El-Amin was at the same event, pulling black residents together to have their photo taken with Johnson for use on campaign materials.

"Jarvis told me, we're going to take a picture, we're trying to get Buddy out there," Robinson said. "We had to sign something saying it was OK to use this."

El-Amin did not return a call for comment.

Elections Had Problems

Johnson lost his re-election bid to Busansky by a little more than 18,000 votes. Since then, he has been besieged by accusations of mismanagement and overspending.

In a 16-page report released Thursday, ex-Johnson chief of staff Kathy Harris outlined the worst of what happened on primary and general election nights, saying poor management led to "misplaced ballots, chaos and disarray."

Among her criticisms:

•Some poll locations were too small and short on voting equipment and staff, which resulted in lines that ran long hours after the polls were scheduled to close.

•There were technical problems with the voting machine vendor, Premier Elections Solutions.

•Callers faced "extreme delays" in reaching the phone bank because of a breakdown in communication during peak hours of voting.

Harris did not return calls for comment.

Reporter John W. Allman can be reached at (813) 259-7915. Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.

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